Samuel Butler Quotes

Death is only a larger kind of going abroad.

If life must not be taken too seriously, then so neither must death.

Be virtuous and you will be vicious.

When a man is in doubt about this or that in his writing, it will often guide him if he asks himself how it will tell a hundred years hence.

Opinions have vested interests just as men have.

I really do not see much use in exalting the humble and meek; they do not remain humble and meek long when they are exalted.

If people would dare to speak to one another unreservedly, there would be a good deal less sorrow in the world a hundred years hence.

Genius might be described as a supreme capacity for getting its possessors into trouble of all kinds

In the midst of vice we are in virtue, and vice versa.

Young people have a marvelous faculty of either dying or adapting themselves to circumstances.

A man should be just cultured enough to be able to look with suspicion upon culture at first, not second hand.

Prayers are to men as dolls are to children.

The history of art is the history of revivals.

Christ: I dislike him very much. Still, I can stand him. What I cannot stand is the wretched band of people whose profession is to hoodwink us about him.

Look before you leap for as you sow, ye are like to reap.

Half the vices which the world condemns most loudly have seeds of good in them and require moderate use rather than total abstinence.

He has spent his life best who has enjoyed it most. God will take care that we do not enjoy it any more than is good for us.

In old times people used to try and square the circle; now they try and devise schemes for satisfying the Irish nation.

Christ was only crucified once and for a few hours. Think of the hundreds of thousands whom Christ has been crucifying in a quiet way ever since.

The dead should be judged like criminals, impartially, but they should be allowed the benefit of the doubt.

Work with some men is as besetting a sin as idleness.

When you've told someone that you've left them a legacy the only decent thing to do is to die at once.

Nobody shoots at Santa Claus.

Loyalty is still the same, whether it win or lose the game; as true as a dial to the sun, although it be not shined upon.

Mr. Tennyson has said that more things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of, but he wisely refrains from saying whether they are good or bad things.

Let us eat and drink neither forgetting death unduly nor remembering it. The Lord hath mercy on whom he will have mercy, etc., and the less we think about it the better.

Any fool can tell the truth, but it requires a man of some sense to know how to lie well.

Marriage is distinctly and repeatedly excluded from heaven. Is this because it is thought likely to mar the general felicity?

There is no such source of error as the pursuit of truth.

The oldest books are only just out to those who have not read them.

Justice while she winks at crimes, Stumbles on innocence sometimes.

A drunkard would not give money to sober people. He said they would only eat it, and buy clothes and send their children to school with it.

They say the test of literary power is whether a man can write an inscription. I say, "Can he name a kitten?"

A lawyer's dream of heaven: every man reclaimed his property at the resurrection, and each tried to recover it from all his forefathers.

Money is the last enemy that shall never be subdued. While there is flesh there is money or the want of money, but money is always on the brain so long as there is a brain in reasonable order.

There is nothing so unthinkable as thought, unless it be the entire absence of thought.

Priests are not men of the world; it is not intended that they should be; and a University training is the one best adapted to prevent their becoming so.

The Ancient Mariner would not have taken so well if it had been called The Old Sailor.

Letters are like wine; if they are sound they ripen with keeping. A man should lay down letters as he does a cellar of wine.

Men should not try to overstrain their goodness more than any other faculty, bodily or mental.

Women can stand a beating except when it is with their own weapons.

I never knew a writer yet who took the smallest pains with his style and was at the same time readable.

My main wish is to get my books into other people's rooms, and to keep other people's books out of mine.

Virtue knows that it is impossible to get on without compromise, and tunes herself, as it were, a trifle sharp to allow for an inevitable fall in playing.

To know God better is only to realize how impossible it is that we should ever know him at all. I know not which is more childish to deny him, or define him.

And, after all, the Athanasian Creed is light and comprehensible reading in comparison with much that now passes for science.

The voice of the Lord is the voice of common sense, which is shared by all that is.

Morality is the custom of one's country and the current feeling of one's peers.

Prayers are to men as dolls are to children. They are not without use and comfort, but it is not easy to take them very seriously.

They say the test of [literary power] is whether a man can write an inscription. I say, "Can he name a kitten?" And by this test I am condemned, for I cannot.